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Duly Noted: Extend Your Mind through Connected Notes
Better thinking makes you a better person. And few things extend your mind as quickly and powerfully as the humble note. Notes let you fulfill commitments, manage complicated projects, and make your ideas real. Digital notes take you even further. By using the right tools and a bit of discipline, you can cultivate a “personal knowledge garden" where your thinking will blossom.
"An informative guide to organizing and managing thoughts, with a digital focus."—Kirkus Reviews
Who Should Read This Book?
Anyone and everyone who wants to get control of their notes to generate better ideas, learning, and actions. Duly Noted is superb for students, academics, business people, technicians, writers, UX people, managers, leaders—virtually anyone who can benefit from taking and managing notes.
Takeaways
Learn best-practice note-taking principles so you can take more concise notes.
Connect your notes to one another to create a personal network of ideas (your own personal “knowledge garden”).
Capture ideas before you lose them.
Organize your notes so that you can find and make sense of them later.
Learn how connected notes can spark insight and lead to new ideas and learning.
Explore how notes can help you collaborate with other minds, including artificial ones
Learn how to use Obsidian, a powerful digital note-taking tool.
Follow the how-to exercises to lead you through the note-taking maze.
"An informative guide to organizing and managing thoughts, with a digital focus."—Kirkus Reviews
Who Should Read This Book?
Anyone and everyone who wants to get control of their notes to generate better ideas, learning, and actions. Duly Noted is superb for students, academics, business people, technicians, writers, UX people, managers, leaders—virtually anyone who can benefit from taking and managing notes.
Takeaways
Learn best-practice note-taking principles so you can take more concise notes.
Connect your notes to one another to create a personal network of ideas (your own personal “knowledge garden”).
Capture ideas before you lose them.
Organize your notes so that you can find and make sense of them later.
Learn how connected notes can spark insight and lead to new ideas and learning.
Explore how notes can help you collaborate with other minds, including artificial ones
Learn how to use Obsidian, a powerful digital note-taking tool.
Follow the how-to exercises to lead you through the note-taking maze.
216 pages, Paperback
Published January 2, 2024
30 people are currently reading
147 people want to read
About the author
Jorge Arango
14 books41 followersJorge Arango is an information architect and strategic designer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He's the author of "Living in Information: Responsible Design for Digital Places" (Two Waves Books, 2018) and co-author of "Information Architecture: For the Web and Beyond" (O'Reilly Media, 2015).
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 3, 2024
Duly Noted: Extend Your Mind Through Connected Notes by Jorge Arango is a quick read which shows you how to take better digital notes in order to generate better ideas and discover new insights.
The core rules are:
* Make short notes
* Connect your notes
* Nurture your notes
The book also serves as a quick introduction to Obsidian, a relatively new, extensible, multiplatform Markdown based note taking application.
I liked that Duly Noted was a quick read and informative, and I look forward to incorporating some of its ideas in my note taking system. Since I've been using Obsidian for a couple of months, I also appreciated some of the Obsidian tips.
I would have liked Duly Noted more if Arango had gone into more depth in certain areas with more examples. For example, a more comprehensive example on connected atomic notes (maybe for the book itself) would have been helpful. At least an online version if not in the book itself.
Partly because of circumstance, I read the epub version using Calibre (an open source ebook manager/reader) while I took notes in Obsidian. While I didn't follow the atomic note idea, I did find it very helpful to be able to take copy certain parts of the text and paste them into Obsidian live. I plan to read more books in this fashion.
I preordered the book directly from Rosenfeld Media and got the physical and ebook versions as a package and plan to get more Rosenfeld books this way.
The core rules are:
* Make short notes
* Connect your notes
* Nurture your notes
The book also serves as a quick introduction to Obsidian, a relatively new, extensible, multiplatform Markdown based note taking application.
I liked that Duly Noted was a quick read and informative, and I look forward to incorporating some of its ideas in my note taking system. Since I've been using Obsidian for a couple of months, I also appreciated some of the Obsidian tips.
I would have liked Duly Noted more if Arango had gone into more depth in certain areas with more examples. For example, a more comprehensive example on connected atomic notes (maybe for the book itself) would have been helpful. At least an online version if not in the book itself.
Partly because of circumstance, I read the epub version using Calibre (an open source ebook manager/reader) while I took notes in Obsidian. While I didn't follow the atomic note idea, I did find it very helpful to be able to take copy certain parts of the text and paste them into Obsidian live. I plan to read more books in this fashion.
I preordered the book directly from Rosenfeld Media and got the physical and ebook versions as a package and plan to get more Rosenfeld books this way.
March 4, 2024
I'm a big fan of Jorge Arango's work, such as his podcast, newsletter, and his book "Living in Information". This book didn't disappoint either. I found this book a very insightful view into all aspects of building a personal knowledge management practice. That is, it doesn't spend the entire book going deep into notetaking, but instead talks about principles and the different activities needed to deal with learning effectively in modern times.
As to be expected from someone who is an information architect, the book helped me take a step back and look at how I manage and use notes overall. For example, it was eye-opening to think about all of the "inboxes" I have to track different things, and learn about the importance of keeping a consistent practice of processing and making new notes in your system. So I found it a very practical book which gave me things I could apply immediately. In this way, I found it a useful read to supplement "How to Take Smart Notes" by Sönke Ahrens, which is the best and most essential book on notes but doesn't have as strong a focus on the day-to-day practicalities of having a practice.
Even though it is a practical book, I also liked how Arango pulls lessons from the long history of people doing work in this area for decades. It felt more rigorous than others who sometimes make it seem like the idea of connected notes was just invented with new tools like Obsidian or Roam.
As to be expected from someone who is an information architect, the book helped me take a step back and look at how I manage and use notes overall. For example, it was eye-opening to think about all of the "inboxes" I have to track different things, and learn about the importance of keeping a consistent practice of processing and making new notes in your system. So I found it a very practical book which gave me things I could apply immediately. In this way, I found it a useful read to supplement "How to Take Smart Notes" by Sönke Ahrens, which is the best and most essential book on notes but doesn't have as strong a focus on the day-to-day practicalities of having a practice.
Even though it is a practical book, I also liked how Arango pulls lessons from the long history of people doing work in this area for decades. It felt more rigorous than others who sometimes make it seem like the idea of connected notes was just invented with new tools like Obsidian or Roam.
February 23, 2024
Very well written but the author spends a lot of time (and probably money) on the myriad tools that help his workflow as a writer. The book is organized in a logical way that makes reading it and following along easy. I would’ve liked to see more on theory around note-taking. I also bought this book because I thought it was going to make me a better note taker, not note maker. So I felt a little short changed. On the plus side, I have a very fresh view of how I can better use note taking apps to organize my thinking and my work on a regular basis.
January 10, 2024
I ordered Duly Noted for two reasons. One, I have to take a lot of notes in various capacities as part of my professional responsibilities (think meeting and project notes but also footnotes and endnotes for papers, that kind of thing). Two, I've been really interested in some of the new notetaking software available that connects together your own notes, but I've been intimidated to get started. I figured this book could help me improve my existing processes and then also get started with exploring some of the tools I haven't tried yet.
So far this book is doing what I hoped it would do! It's very practical, with actual tips about what should be included in notes, different types of notes, where and how to store them and cross-reference items, etc. Given that I abandoned my beloved paper notes for OneNote a few years ago (paper is too hard to search!), I loved that this book has suggestions for digitizing hard copy notes so they aren't lost in a black hole.
The software that is used as an extended example in this book is Obsidian. As I mentioned I've been a little stymied about how to get started with better tools, so while I know Obsidian is just one option, I really appreciate a resource to understand what it offers and decide if that's where I want to dip my toe in.
Finally, I don't know of any other resources that offer this kind of advice so I am glad to have Duly Noted on my shelf!
So far this book is doing what I hoped it would do! It's very practical, with actual tips about what should be included in notes, different types of notes, where and how to store them and cross-reference items, etc. Given that I abandoned my beloved paper notes for OneNote a few years ago (paper is too hard to search!), I loved that this book has suggestions for digitizing hard copy notes so they aren't lost in a black hole.
The software that is used as an extended example in this book is Obsidian. As I mentioned I've been a little stymied about how to get started with better tools, so while I know Obsidian is just one option, I really appreciate a resource to understand what it offers and decide if that's where I want to dip my toe in.
Finally, I don't know of any other resources that offer this kind of advice so I am glad to have Duly Noted on my shelf!
January 30, 2025
This was a great book to learn more about what tools to use when building your pkm. It also had some great insights into how to build your pkm. I was just hoping that since Jorge is a great Information Architect, that it would have included more details on how to build your pkm in respect to what he’s learned from years in IA. Less Obsidian jazz hands and more “this is how you do it”.
That said, this was a MUCH better book than Smart Notes. Way more actual information.
That said, this was a MUCH better book than Smart Notes. Way more actual information.
February 8, 2024
A good, thorough, clear exploration of using systems like Obsidian to make connected notes that help you to integrate your thinking across categories and themes.
There's nothing particularly novel in this book's approach, but it does a great job of introducing concepts and walking the reader through practical examples.
There's nothing particularly novel in this book's approach, but it does a great job of introducing concepts and walking the reader through practical examples.
May 3, 2025
Unfortunately, just a summary of Jorge’s excellent podcast. No new insights.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews